The Bullshit Economy
Who knows what's even happening anymore and why or how and why again?
Shitting your pants over Trump’s erratic tariff game?
I’ve read dozens of opinions on the matter, informed and otherwise, and all I’ve managed to come up with are dozens of competing and incompatible declarations about what’s definitely, certainly, obviously going to happen. I imagine it’s been a similar experience for you (unless you’re willfully excluding opinions you don’t want to hear).
Is our strong and glorious economy about to fall off an economic cliff? Or is it dogshit wrapped in fancy paper that won’t actually change very much when the veneer gets torn away? Is history’s most insane tariff gambit actually a masterful stroke of 4D chess that will steward in a new Golden Age?
Nobody really knows what’s going to happen in the long run, so don’t believe anyone who says they do.
Maybe shitting your pants truly is the correct response, but while you head out for new underwear, take a moment to consider that pretty much every public-facing part of economics is a lie.
Nobody is working with real data anymore.
At least, not in the professional pundit or politico class — and certainly not in the doomscrolling section of the social media sewer.
The stock market is overvalued and high on hype from the same people who think Fartcoin is truly worth three-quarters of a billion dollars (as of this writing). The Consumer Price Index is manipulated into near meaninglessness to hide inflation and price gouging. Nobel-winning economists confidently proclaim that food, shelter, and energy are unimportant variables in economic forecasts.
In short, nobody sees the real picture. It’s obscured by bullshit. The entire information space in general is a cesspool of lies and marketing spin masquerading as reliable data.
Nowhere is this truer than at the intersection of economics and politics.
Consider the ultimate hot potato of economic bullshit: unemployment statistics.
When I first started paying attention to politics back during George W. Bush’s term, I learned that Republicans were juicing the unemployment statistics by not counting people who’d given up looking for work.
Dropping entirely out of the workforce due to lack of opportunity seemed to me like the purest definition of “unemployed,” but those rightwingers were like, “Uhhhh…actually…that doesn’t count.” Then, Barack Obama got elected and the script flipped. Then, it was the Democrats painting rosy pictures with gussied-up employment statistics, while Republicans pointed out the sleights-of-hand.
Cue the same cycle for Trump Season 1 and Biden after him.
Or consider the lead up to 2008’s housing market crash.
Remember how the ratings agencies gave AAA status to bundles of the riskiest mortgages imaginable so Wall Street traders could keep inflating a bubble based on imaginary spreadsheet data?
And remember how predatory lenders kept this system alive by selling the pipedream of prosperity-via-homeownership to America’s hollowed-out working class?
Remember how, when it all came crashing down, the “experts” and analysts and politicians said the only correct response was to give the architects of this failure huge bonuses and let them continue running the world?
(Seriously, look up how many of 2008’s star players found cabinet positions and other critical jobs in every single administration since, including the current one.)
“It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.” —George Carlin
The “respectable,” “responsible” people in our media and politics have led us into disaster after disaster and faced no consequences.
Their whole careers are one giant participation trophy. In the end, they usually get better jobs and more power. It’s quite impressive, really.
Maximum effort is always made to maintain the status quo, no matter how much it fucks normal losers like you and me, and thick layers of protective bullshit are slathered around it like convulsive armor to discourage us from questioning the vaunted wisdom of the bovine fecalists.
Now, we’re at another inflection point where the general public is asking, “what the fuck’s happening,” and everyone who was wrong or lied about everything is quick to say, “Here’s exactly how it’s going to be.”
And the biggest liar of them all is the President
Lest anyone think I’m in the MAGA crowd for daring to criticize the doomsayers, let me say that President Trump is the most prolific bullshitter of our time, lying most often about his financial success.
His resume is littered with failed businesses, bankruptcies, and lawsuits. His original allure and celebrity were fabricated out of New York City in-crowd culture, not true financial prowess. His current allure is made from spite for the very same cultural elites who created him in the first place along with a bizarre new conventional wisdom in America which claims that anyone who can do a decent standup act is worth taking seriously.
So, the bullshit goes all the way to the top.
But in a weird way, it’s sort of comforting.
It means nobody has the authority to say there isn’t hope.
So why not hope, at least some of the time, anyway?
We’re in a period of massive change not unlike similar periods in history, where the old ways of thinking don’t work like they used to. The 20th century world and its order are falling apart as new ideas and technologies take hold. Inevitably, there will be disaster, as there was at the turn of the last century. But there is also great opportunity.
So shit your pants if you must, but make sure you also invest in some sort of spiritual bidet as well.